


The Tipping Point

by chantefable



Series: Beltane Collection [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Auror Draco Malfoy, Aurors, Bureaucracy, Humor, M/M, Magic, Ministry of Magic, Obliviation, Paperwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-20
Updated: 2012-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-22 16:55:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3736522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Auror Malfoy is dashing, cunning, and intelligent, Harry Potter takes his job very seriously, and the murky matter of wishing wells is mentioned in passing. </p><p>This story contains one moderately oblivious Chief Administrative Officer of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, one dashing debonair Auror, unlimited verbosity, merciless suspense, and implied unaccounted for consequences of the Case of the Warwickshire Wishing Well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tipping Point

It must be stated with utmost clarity and conviction, leaving no room for idle doubt, that the Chief Administrative Officer of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement knows no peace.

He battles to limit the use of environmentally unfriendly origami and braves the wrath of friend and foe alike to introduce ever-changing new models of more efficient memo distribution. He accomplishes feats of budget planning. He vanquishes unfinished paperwork.

He conducts surveys. He optimises resources. He overcomes near-insurmountable obstacles, such as the trade unions of Hit Wizards and Obliviators and the uproar at the perpetually disenchanted WWW Enchanted Coffee Maker TM in the Auror lounge, to fight for faster, better, and better documented Magical Law Enforcement.

The job comes with enough troubles to last two lifetimes.

Let it be known that Harry Potter absolutely loves it.

But wrongly registered magical misdemeanours and unauthorised use of restricted spells by the treacherously rebellious staff of the Department of MLE is one thing, and the monstrous backlog of applications, notifications, reports, resolutions, and solutions is another. Chief Administrative Officer Harry Potter is decapitating the evil hydra of inefficient management and cheeky insubordination one bungling head at a time.

Auror Draco Malfoy, however, is in a category all of his own.

He is the most reckless Auror in the force, dazzling like a dashing hero from a Fiammetta Frillypoop romance novel, and always, _always_ behind with his paperwork. He is rash, but he is also cunning, and, worst of all, he is intelligent, so his immediate reaction to any kind of grisly mystery that befalls the citizens of wizarding Britain is _let's go right there and poke it, and then poke it some more, and by that time I will have figured out what to do_.

That he is usually right is absolutely irrelevant.

What matters is that Auror Draco Malfoy is the worst nightmare turned flesh and blood and badge that the fevered mind of any Chief Administrative Officer could conceive, and he's manifested in Harry Potter's department.

Auror Draco Malfoy disregards the guidelines for misdemeanour registration. He disobeys the procedure for miscreant apprehension. He couldn't care less for the Standard Operating Procedure for MLE Disapparition. He continuously misinterprets the Directive for Cautious Magic Use in Front of Muggles.

For the sake of precision, it has to be specified that Auror Malfoy _claims_ continuous misinterpretation of the Directive, as the stressful conditions of the job only allow for a very hasty assessment of the situation at hand before, say, a rabid Manticore goes for a taste of his arm, or something of the sort. Harry Potter, however, is utterly convinced that Auror Malfoy doesn't give two shits about the Directive or the Muggles. Auror Malfoy sees it fit to simply rely on the Obliviator on watch to clean up the mess after his ghoul-bashing, fuck you very much.

Actually, Harry Potter suspects that Auror Malfoy conspires with the Obliviators to procure them with extra billable hours. (The Obliviators do seem to hold Harry in very low esteem. He can never remember what he did to piss them off, though.)

Auror Malfoy hardly ever bothers to document his leaps of logic, which makes figuring out where the hell he has disappeared to mid-case a nauseatingly frequent nuisance. What Malfoy lacks in experience, he makes up for in ability, and so he is often assigned the most fiendishly difficult cases. (Or, when Harry is feeling particularly vindictive and just happens to be having tea and tiramisu with the Head Auror, the most freakishly annoying ones.)

This frustrating combination of Malfoy being undeniably competent as an Auror and blatantly – intentionally! – incompetent as a Ministry employee is driving Harry up the meditatively blue wall of his ergonomically equipped office.

Today, Harry Potter is prowling the corridors of the Department in a particularly dire state of nervous agitation. The quarterly audit has revealed gaping holes in Malfoy's documentation – and by gaping holes, Harry means abysses of despair.

Witness reports for the Belby case? Missing. 

Crime scene report from the Banshee brawl in February? Missing.

The evidence for that case with the self-transfiguring floating bed in Kent? Not checked in the archive at all!

It could very well be lying about in Malfoy's flat for all they know!

This has nothing to do with typical Auror recklessness, no. Harry fixes the door to the Auror Office with a glare until it opens with a grumbling squeak. Despite the fact that Malfoy's hairline has begun to recede, he still acts like a feckless whelp. It might have something to do with Malfoy joining Auror training when he was twenty-six – a trial, a string of charity projects and minor community work for his mother's organisation, and a rather murky elopement, followed by a quick divorce, under his belt. He re-sat his NEWTs and plunged into training, surrounded by witches and wizards straight out of Hogwarts, brimming with energy and enthusiasm. For better or for worse (as time has proven, definitely for worse for those who care about order and record-keeping), Malfoy fit right in, absorbing the manner and disposition of younger folk, becoming fluent in their bastardised Muggle jargon and jokes ('how many tweets would a nitwit tweet' and other things Harry failed to grasp and wasn't chagrined about it), and promptly regressing to the level of an eighteen year old himself.

There, in Harry's opinion, he stays to this day, blasé about personal safety and proper penmanship in forms, forcing Harry to live in constant dread of the day he would need to deal with Auror Malfoy's health insurance.

It irks Harry that Malfoy lets vampires and other fanged creatures take a bite or two of him on such regular basis. If there's trouble brewing he is there with brass knobs on, before the other Aurors do as much as blink. (Just think of the Case of the Hampshire Horklump Herd: worst Beltane week in years, even worse than that time when all Obliviators were sprinkled with some magic Pixie sex dust in Suffolk. The sex dust was soon forgotten; slime-covered Malfoy on a rampage in Eastleigh still comes to haunt Harry whenever someone brings up MLE discipline and code-following, or rather, the lack thereof.) Such behaviour is foolhardy in the extreme – Gryffindorish, one might say, but Harry suspects the risk was part of a devious scheme to drown Harry in follow-up paperwork with St Mungo's. It is almost a soothing thought, a welcome constant about Malfoy's character.

On the other hand, perhaps there is too much constancy about Malfoy's character for Harry's liking. Because there we have Malfoy, apparently frozen in eternal boyhood and exciting adventures, all lithe and suave and debonair in thigh-high boots and crimson Auror uniform, his features youthful and mischievous even if some of his hair decided to abandon his forehead; while Harry feels every one of his (almost) thirty-two years, some more than others. He has worry lines and a few grey hairs at the temples, he has friends and enemies in high places, he has a bit more weight than he would have liked (and not in muscle – though he _is_ wide-shouldered and bulky these days, as opposed to his wiry teenage frame) and he always has a lot of paperwork to do.

Much of it related to Malfoy's stunts.

One might remark how strange it is, to what extent unsettling experience and shifting circumstances can change people. Two decades ago, teenage Harry Potter would have envisioned himself as a raffish Auror on a quest for justice, and Draco Malfoy as a nagging bureaucrat, or at the very least a dour-faced socialite with a taste for politics. But their stormy formative years, the events of the war and the deep changes in wizarding society in its aftermath made their dreams and desires change greatly. Where one wanted peace and routine, the other sought fulfilment and a chance to prove his worth. Both built themselves new lives, yet somehow managed to stay connected, counterbalancing each other like they used to.

So there it is. As Harry Potter finds himself standing in the Auror Office, Penelope Clearwater giving him a shrewd look from across the hall, he has an epiphany. 

Malfoy is making him feel old, serious, and unadventurous. Malfoy is making him feel like a fretting mother hen, and it's not right, not fair. Harry loves his job, he thinks, staring at a procession of trainees emerging from the Spell Practice Room, shuffling after Auror Turpin like ducklings. Harry loves his job, and he loves his life, and he is damned pleased with his choices, with the space he has carved for himself.

The life he has, and the person he has become, has been entirely his decision.

Harry finds it immensely satisfying.

And yet there is something about Malfoy's antics, his rule-breaking and his rakish smile, that makes Harry feel incomplete.

Yes, he has come to the Auror Office to talk to Malfoy about his numerous filing failures – to give him a stern talking-to, like in 2010 when they had that terribly tiresome incident with an Augurey and a coughing gramophone in Hertfordshire. And yet, lo and behold, Harry Potter is standing smack in the middle of the wide corridor, time and trainees drifting by, contemplating strange longings, competitiveness, and possible resentment.

For sure, it is not the most convenient time and place for a detailed introspection, Harry privately admits when he is thrown off-balance by the crack of Apparition –

Apparition? On Ministry grounds? Oh, of course –

Malfoy has found a loophole in the wards. Again.

Auror Malfoy dusts himself off and smirks at Harry – a smirk that somehow speaks volumes, with quite a few passages on 'huh' and 'gotcha' and 'audit, Potter?', a few cheeky lines thrown into the mix – then offers his arm to his side-along, Obliviator Zeller.

"Potter," Malfoy says with a nod.

"Auror Malfoy." Harry sighs. Zeller just gives him the standard Obliviator treatment, which means ignoring him completely. Harry wishes he knew what the matter was. They can't be still angry over the twelve-form document pack for mass memory wipe-out he introduced four years ago, can they?

"Back from Merseyside. Piece of cake, really. Domestic dispute, the Hit Wizards could have handled it. So someone got smacked on the head with Class A non-tradable goods. Could have been a skillet for all use the poor dragon egg got." Malfoy sounds a little breathless, though. His tunic is clinging to his shoulders a tad too tightly, possibly with sweat, and its hem is a little singed. Maybe the dragon hatched. Huh. Harry is not sure he wants to know at this point.

Malfoy is looking at him with an expression Harry cannot quite pinpoint, something that might be expectation, eagerness, a desire to please under a thin veneer of nonchalance – really, very much like a schoolboy awaiting House points for a job well done. However, he is obviously trying to mask it under proper coolness and prickliness, and Harry does not like to think of himself as a cruel man. He wouldn't call Malfoy on it, no.

Besides, there is something darkly tantalising about the thought of Malfoy striving to please him through feats of ghost-wrangling and crime-fighting and whatnot. There's something sweet and hot curling in the pit of Harry's stomach at the thought of being the focus of somebody's attention, of Malfoy doing things and thinking of – what? Harry's approval? What? There is something heady, dark and sweet, something captivating about Malfoy, full stop, if Harry decides to be completely honest with himself.

"Indeed, Auror Malfoy." Dammit, Harry cannot even say 'Thank you, Auror Malfoy,' it would be unacceptable and patronising, Harry isn't his direct superior, for Merlin's sake. He squashes the giddy thought of being in charge of Malfoy – Malfoy under his command – Malfoy in his power – Malfoy under him – dammit, where is this thought going – and rushes to add, "Then I expect the report and index forms where appropriate to be added to the file." 

There. This is familiar. This is normal. This is paperwork.

This is Malfoy, rolling his perfect, wide shoulders and fixing Harry with a mischievous gaze, fire under ice – like he did last week at the Department meeting, like he did last month at the impromptu Quidditch match, like he did at last year's Christmas party – and giving a curt nod, which somehow seems laden with meaning that Harry fails to catch.

"In triplicate, Potter. I know how such things matter to you."

That shouldn't sound dirty, should it? Except Harry is fairly sure it really does: even Zeller raises her neatly trimmed eyebrows a little.

And so Harry remains standing, silent and frowning, as Zeller files out and Malfoy turns on his heel and disappears behind the heavy door of his office. Harry stays rooted to the spot, arms crossed, wondering if Malfoy has just suggested Harry has a paperwork kink, of all things.

If Malfoy might have possibly implied he was interested. Right now. When he teased – flirted? – and turned around so slowly and elegantly that the shape of his muscled back was kind of impossible to ignore.

Or – or last week. The Department meeting. Where there was much banter, and Malfoy playing with his quill, tapping and licking the tip, and trading quips with Clearwater. (The quips were somehow mostly about him, Potter this and that, but they could have been compliments as much as insults. Malfoy does have a way with words.)

Or – or last month. Brisk dawn. Quidditch. One-on-one. Sweat and speed and the thrill of chase, some playful shoving that was pretty hard, actually, and Malfoy's mouth twisted in a handsome smirk... Well, there might have been a tiny bit of sexual tension, but surely – 

Or – the Christmas party. The dancing. The mistletoe. The moist cool of champagne on smooth, hot lips. But that's normal, isn't it? Everybody does that. Besides, Harry is fairly certain his kisses are nothing to write home about. He would have known if the snogging had crossed the line of something serious, wouldn't he?

Wouldn't he?

Or. Two years ago. The Case of the Warwickshire Wishing Well. One hell of a nightmare – Aurors Malfoy and Perks started by testing whether the well actually granted wishes and it all escalated from there. Three all-nighters at the Department finalising Malfoy's abominable paperwork. Abominable, absolutely; it was so disastrous one might think Malfoy was cocking it up on purpose, he really wasn't that dense or careless about – well, anything – and –

And.

The memory of Malfoy's warm, shapely shoulder against his, his voice in Harry's ear – and the astute, professional things he said, he really was a competent Auror, Merlin's beard – clashes into the memory of the first report Malfoy had filed, and the second – those hadn't been that bad, no – and then it's all kind of blurry because Harry keeps remembering strange things like lingering handshakes and awkward (quiet, comfortable) rides in the Ministry lift, and how sometimes they would go out to the Leaky Cauldron with other MLE people and end up sampling Hannah's peach schnapps at the bar counter, just the two of them.

Harry is still standing in the corridor of the Auror Office, staring at Malfoy's closed door, and definitely not thinking about all the times he would imagine keeping Malfoy tied up with a good Binding Spell to avoid him rushing half-cocked into some rabid Red Cap affair, or gagging Malfoy with Harry's own tie (discreetly green, as befits a serious Ministry official), or the imaginary bone-deep satisfaction of getting an expense report _just right_ from Malfoy, just once, having him do what Harry wants him to do –

Harry is still standing there, staring at Malfoy's door, thinking about Malfoy in his form-fitting uniform, about the velvet timbre of Malfoy's voice when he is talking about magical weaponry innovations, and the fact that Harry has been very, very well played.

The aforementioned fact does not exactly surprise Harry Potter himself, as it surely wouldn't surprise anyone acquainted with him, however briefly or superficially. However, it leaves a thrill, a spark, a yearning – a strong desire to force open the door of Malfoy's office and _do_ something. 

Accept the challenge. Show that he understands, that he knows, that he wants.

Or strike. Kiss. Taunt. Or meet on equal terms.

Surrender.

Win.

Anything can happen.

They have apparently been flirting for years. Anything, anything can happen. 

And Harry knows, without question, that he is going to open the door.

And so one might find oneself asking, what shall happen?

Shall Harry Potter wrench the door open, stride inside Auror Malfoy's office, sweep him in his arms and get him sprawled across Auror Malfoy's own desk, sending papers flying to the floor (oh, horror of horrors!), and kiss the line of Malfoy's jaw, his neck and his lips until he is gasping and squirming under Harry, until he arches and twists and flips Harry over, pinning him down on the desk, or on the floor, or in Auror Malfoy's office chair, and, well, maybe they shall talk then?

Or maybe not.

Shall Harry Potter knock on the door politely, and see himself into Auror Malfoy's office, and make vaguely polite chit-chat that they both despise, and perhaps smile, and perhaps invite Auror Malfoy for a game of Quidditch, or a beer, or a walk, or a date, all in a very civilised and reasonable manner, and from that moment on their suspected mutual attraction shall continue on an ardent course?

Shall Auror Malfoy even welcome Harry Potter's advances? Shall whatever is coming – a kiss, a grin, a suggestion – be mocked, or denied, or answered with equal passion?

Shall there be playful banter and light bondage, breakfast in bed and, eventually, properly written mission reports, at long last? Shall there be adventures and caresses, desire and domesticity, in no particular order, or shall there be nothing more than a day of fervent passion, making love against the wall, in the shower, in a moonlit field if that's what it takes? 

Shall there be an explosion, a clash of wills, shall there be two people learning to navigate their way around each other under different stars, forging a relationship, or shall it all end with nothing more than a shrug and a handshake, with nothing coming out of this desperate want?

With so many options open, the question now arises: 

_What shall happen when Harry Potter opens the door?_

Something minor and mundane, or something creative and captivating, or something shocking and unheard of?

Something ardently amorous?

What indeed?

What shall happen?

That is the question that keeps us all riveted – you, distinguished reader, the humble chronicler at your disposal, and the illustrious Chief Administrative Officer of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement himself.

Harry Potter opens the door.


End file.
